Johan Arrias - Pour Alto Seul [Ausculto Fonogram 004]

Released recently as cat.no. 004 of the label known as Ausculto Fonogram is "Pour Alto Seul", the first ever full length solo work created by Swedish artist Johan Arrias who is exploring the sonic realm of the saxophone as a solo instrument over the course of eight tracks and a total runtime of roughly 31 minutes. In this exploration we see the instrument being thrown back on its very own, wandering through space, time and perception without any context or pre-existing framework, be it being embedded musically or in any matrix of time, tuning or tempo. This approach allows for a use and abuse of the saxophone beyond what its mostly known for, unveiling a widely unknown beauty that lies within a deep, innate melancholy and sadness, beauteous desolation and ever yearning voice, atonal, ambient'ish and mechanical pieces like the tender "Abandoned City" or the more percussive "Wind Variations" with its fever'ish, ritualistic atmosphere whilst cuts like "Rivers" introduce a super naturalistic take on saxophone playing one rarely even comes across, no matter what specific genre one's talking about. Defo a well interesting case study on one single musical subject, this.

Album artwork on Instagram!